Microsoft decides that most Flash sites work just fine with touch after all.

Internet Explorer 10 in Windows 8 and Windows RT contains an embedded version of Flash, updated through Windows Update. However, not all Flash sites can actually use this embedded Flash. On Windows 8, the Metro version of Internet Explorer can only use Flash on a list of sites that Microsoft authorizes. Only the desktop version has full unfettered Flash access. On Windows RT, both Metro and desktop Internet Explorer use the whitelist.

That's going to change tomorrow when the list will change from a whitelist to a blacklist. Flash will work on every site except a selection that Microsoft is explicitly blocking due to known incompatibilities with touch. Desktop Internet Explorer 10 on Windows 8 will continue to be unrestricted.

Why the about turn? Microsoft says that most sites with Flash content do in fact work sufficiently well with touch, enough so that a blacklist approach provides a better user experience. Fewer than four percent of sites that the company tested didn't work properly, and most of those non-functional sites didn't work because they also needed other browser plugins.

Prior to this, we'd noted problems with the whitelist approach—there are just too many sites that would probably work fine but weren't whitelisted. Other Windows 8 users figured out how to add custom sites to the whitelist to address the problem.

People complain about browsers tracking their moves but Flash has to be one of the worst tracking offenders, if not the worst. On top of that, some websites stuff their pages with Flash-based ads that start playing right after being downloaded, probably to generate more tracking.

Do yourself a favor and disable Flash. Let IE ask you every time whether you want to play Flash content or not. Your pages will download and execute a lot faster.

Yes! Finally microsoft shows some sense to make their value proposition clear. Not mindlessly mimicing apple and the ipad and restrictions based computing. The entire point of the windows experience is that all software old and new works... Freedom to run whatever software you choose... Whew!

People complain about browsers tracking their moves but Flash has to be one of the worst tracking offenders, if not the worst. On top of that, some websites stuff their pages with Flash-based ads that start playing right after being downloaded, probably to generate more tracking.

Do yourself a favor and disable Flash. Let IE ask you every time whether you want to play Flash content or not. Your pages will download and execute a lot faster.

I could understand blacklisting sites that contain malware, but otherwise why blacklist at all? It seems rather shortsighted to me.

The concept was simple. No mobile platform supports flash anymore. Windows RT is the last remaining one. So even it only being able to show flash on sites on a white list was still better than any other mobile offering. When it comes to the non mobile side of Windows 8, well then it is a virtual certainty to be running on x86/x64 hardware, so you would have full IE10 with no blacklist/whitelist of flash so everything works.

This is more than just the blacklist/whitelist issue- this is more evidence of how Microsoft is willing to follow the users' opinions once in a while (cough cough, Apple).

There was the Office 2013 licensing changes to (re)allow transfers, and now this... if only people would be more optimistic about Microsoft's decisions.

For the past several years, Microsoft has been the best tech company when it comes to listening to a vocal minority and respecting their wishes as representative of the average, silent, consumer.

Apple completely ignores consumer feedback, typically for at least two major release cycles. Google lets numbers dictate policy, changes, and improvements. IBM still hasn't figured out what a "consumer" is (they make great stuff, but never try to win consumer hearts and minds). Dell takes the Walmart approach of giving people as much as they can as cheap as they can (not necessarily a bad thing really). HP is lost between competing with Dell's strategy and an engineering desire to compete with Apple and IBM on form, elegance and quality (I'm looking directly at the TouchPad and early Slate series). Samsung listens to consumers, but frequently loses essence in translation.

What about the original reason for blocking flash altogether, i.e, the battery drain and heat issue? I was kinda happy to have YouTube playing via HTML5 like on Windows Phone. Maybe I'll have to make my own blacklist (at least to keep annoying ads away)

What about the original reason for blocking flash altogether, i.e, the battery drain and heat issue? I was kinda happy to have YouTube playing via HTML5 like on Windows Phone. Maybe I'll have to make my own blacklist (at least to keep annoying ads away)

Maybe because Adobe is actually fixing the problem ? read the blog post on MS blog , they are saying why they are changing their position.

I could understand blacklisting sites that contain malware, but otherwise why blacklist at all? It seems rather shortsighted to me.

The concept was simple. No mobile platform supports flash anymore. Windows RT is the last remaining one. So even it only being able to show flash on sites on a white list was still better than any other mobile offering. When it comes to the non mobile side of Windows 8, well then it is a virtual certainty to be running on x86/x64 hardware, so you would have full IE10 with no blacklist/whitelist of flash so everything works.

That doesn't seem very logical. "Still being better than other mobile offerings" isn't reason to arbitrarily block flash on most websites. They must have had a specific reason for blocking these websites. Or, since it was a whitelist approach, a reason for only allowing the ones they did.

Been bitten far too many times by IE to trust it, especially when corporates keep running IE6 because of some crufty old legacy app that wont run in anything but JRE 1.133223312.2323 and that version of ie.

As for Adobe 'fixing' the problem, theyve been fixing glaring security flaws for 2+ years, and yet, more flaws keep showing up, I fear Microsoft is setting itself up to be a battered spouse in this relationship.

I could understand blacklisting sites that contain malware, but otherwise why blacklist at all? It seems rather shortsighted to me.

The concept was simple. No mobile platform supports flash anymore. Windows RT is the last remaining one. So even it only being able to show flash on sites on a white list was still better than any other mobile offering. When it comes to the non mobile side of Windows 8, well then it is a virtual certainty to be running on x86/x64 hardware, so you would have full IE10 with no blacklist/whitelist of flash so everything works.

That doesn't seem very logical. "Still being better than other mobile offerings" isn't reason to arbitrarily block flash on most websites. They must have had a specific reason for blocking these websites. Or, since it was a whitelist approach, a reason for only allowing the ones they did.

The reason they gave was "Most flash stuff isn't usable with touch and sucks the life out of your battery." They whitelisted the ones that were usable with touch, which had the added bonus of disabling flash in most cases, allowing battery consumption to stay limited. Apparently they worked with adobe to make it more efficient?

Probably not. I would not be surprised if it wastes a lot of battery. Not that I think windows 8 is all that efficient to begin with. Efficiency has never been one of microsofts goals. They always release inefficient stuff and then wait for hardware to come out that takes care of the problem. The next generation of hardware will probably have great battery life on windows 8. Like the iPad does. So it really won't matter in the long run.

[...] especially when corporates keep running IE6 because of some crufty old legacy app that wont run in anything but JRE 1.133223312.2323 and that version of ie.

This I agree with, silly and foolish. Sadly, old crappy apps are often too expensive to have re-written.

Darkseid wrote:

As for Adobe 'fixing' the problem, theyve been fixing glaring security flaws for 2+ years, and yet, more flaws keep showing up, I fear Microsoft is setting itself up to be a battered spouse in this relationship.

Probably not. I would not be surprised if it wastes a lot of battery. Not that I think windows 8 is all that efficient to begin with. Efficiency has never been one of microsofts goals. They always release inefficient stuff and then wait for hardware to come out that takes care of the problem. The next generation of hardware will probably have great battery life on windows 8. Like the iPad does. So it really won't matter in the long run.

windows on arm has excellent battery life, easily on par with ipads. Its more of an Intel issue than a Microsoft issue.

That doesn't seem very logical. "Still being better than other mobile offerings" isn't reason to arbitrarily block flash on most websites. They must have had a specific reason for blocking these websites. Or, since it was a whitelist approach, a reason for only allowing the ones they did.

Because on Surface RT anything other than basic flash stuff wouldn't work, because an ARM CPU is way slower than even Atom. They wanted no flash, but practicality said they had to enable it for places they could test and make sure it worked.

It wasn't so much battery, as I was able to play many hours of flash video while flying across the pacific on my Surface RT.

This is a good move. For me as a web developer some sites I work on require flash and the problem with the whitelist is that obviously they are blocked by default. If I wanted to use my own custom whitelist sure I can do it. But that means deleting all my cache and history every time I want to add a new site, which is an inconvenience.

Now really, the only thing IE needs is the ability for addons in a similar style to firefox and chrome. IE10 with AdBlock Plus would be absolutely amazing! But I know that's probably not going to happen ever... especially on my surface rt.